WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE TRADES.
The fifth count in the Suffrage Declaration of Sentiments reads as
follows: "He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and
from those she is permitted to follow she receives but scanty
remuneration."
The women who wrote that in 1848, in common with the majority of American
women, were presumably being well provided for in their own homes, by men
whose boast it was that their wives and daughters did not need or care to
seek employment elsewhere. It is true that at that time, because of this
supposed advantage, as married women they could not have engaged in
separate business that would involve the making of contracts or distinct
bargain and sale. To the world the husband was the wife's financial
manager. But at that time the wife could enter any of the employments as a
paid clerk or worker. This count seems more surprising in view of the fact
that, writing only three years later, to a Suffrage convention that met in
Akron, Ohio, Mrs. Stanton said: "The trades and professions are all open
to us; let us quietly enter and make ourselves, if not rich and famous, at
least independent and respectable." Two years later still, Colonel Thomas
W. Higginson wrote to another Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio:
"We complain of the industrial disadvantages of women, and indicate at the
same time their capacities for a greater variety of pursuits. Why not
obtain a statement on as large a scale as possible, first of what women
are doing now, commercially and mechanically, throughout the Union, and
secondly, of the embarrassments which they meet, the inequality of their
wages, and all the other peculiarities of their position." This would have
been most valuable and interesting, and it would seem that something of
the kind should have preceded the sweeping accusation made in the
Declaration; but there appears in their "History" no evidence of its
having been done. In 1859 Caroline H. Ball said, in addressing a Suffrage
convention: "I honor women who act. That is the reason that I greet so
gladly girls like Harriet Hosmer, Louisa Landor, and Margaret Foley.
Whatever they do, or do not do, for Art, they do a great deal for the
cause of labor. I do not believe any one in this room has an idea of the
avenues that are open to women already." Then follows a list of the trades
then pursued by women in Great Britain. Of the United States she said: "Of
factory operatives in 1845 there were 55,828 men and 75,710 women. Women
are glue-makers, glove-makers, workers in gold and silver leaf, hair-
weavers, hat and cap-makers, hose-weavers, workers in India-rubber, paper-
hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and harness-makers,
shoe-makers, soda-room keepers, snuff and cigar-makers, stock and
suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers and stereotypers, umbrella-makers,
upholsterers, card-makers, photographers, house and sign-painters, fruit-
hawkers, button-makers, tobacco-packers, paper-box makers, embroiderers,
and fur-sewers." She added: "In New Haven seven women work with seventy
men in a clock factory (at half wages)." And in summing up she said: "The
great evils that lie at the foundation of depressed wages are that want of
respect for labor which prevents ladies from engaging in it, and that want
of respect for women which prevents men from valuing properly the work
they do. Make women equal with men before the law, and wages will adjust
themselves."
Women are equal with men legally and wages have not adjusted themselves,
and the law has had no control over the feelings and opinions of men and
women. Those who were large-minded enough to respect labor asked no
warrant from legislation, and those who were small-minded enough to
undervalue woman's work because it was woman's, do so still despite the
statutes, and would if women voted at every election. Men were equal with
each other before the law, but that did not compel the respect of foolish
men, nor did their wages adjust themselves to equality on that account. If
there were more men working in a trade in a given place than the demand
for their products required, the wage would fall, and so it must with
women. But reasons entered into the market value of woman's work that did
not enter into that of men. Mrs. Dall mentions but one trade in which the
wages were lower for women, and there they competed with men. Those seven
women working with the seventy men in New Haven were not expected to be
called upon to support a family by their earnings. If they were girls, in
the natural course of things they were expected to leave the work whenever
they were ready to marry. If one of them married one of the seventy men,
the firm of employers would lose her services entirely; but the man who
married her would be depended upon to work more steadily than before, and
he would also have more incentive to do better work in order to command
still higher wages. The long cry of Suffrage has not been able to bring
about "equal pay for equal work," even where legislation to that effect
has been introduced into Trades Unions and State laws. This has still
rested, and must rest, with the employer, and his action must be governed
by quality and demand and supply. The attempt to secure "equal wages"
among men has resulted in bringing down the wages of all to the point of
the poorer workers. The general laws of trade, like those of government,
are based on principles of universal equity, and however strenuously
temporary deviations may be pressed, they return at last to the natural
position. This is not saying that there is not great injustice toward
labor by capital, and toward capital by labor, but that the foundation
principles tend to govern the mutual relations, and forcing that is
contrary to these cannot be permanently successful. If the work of women
for any reason is unequal, the wages will be, and the mere fact that some
particular women work for some particular time the same number of hours,
and as well as do the men in the same establishments, does not do away
with the fact that women's work in general is not as steady as men's, and
is not expected to meet the same emergency of family support. No one can
believe more fully than I in equal wages for work that is really equal;
but it seems to me that private contract, and not public action, must
regulate the matter of special wage.
Government reports show that the average age of the working-girl in this
country is but twenty-two years, and that after twenty the number falls
off rapidly. Unskilled labor must forever take the place of that which is
withdrawn, which is another and most valid reason for lower wages. That
lower wages are the result of natural causes, and not of unnatural
feeling, is shown in many ways. Woman teachers at the West, where
teachers were needed, received as good pay as did men. In New York I heard
Superintendent Jasper, I think it was, say: "I am in favor of equal pay
for equal work, for the two sexes; but we cannot give it here. We can get
twice as many good women teachers as men teachers, and when we need men we
must pay at a higher rate." This does not extend to the highest grade of
teachers, superintendents, and professors in colleges, where men compete
with one another. There the compensation is the same for equal work. In
the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature
women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive.
In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that
counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice.
Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and
acrobats, alas! command the highest price.
There is, among others, this fundamental difference between the business
life of men and women. For men who pursue occupations outside the home,
there are women to manage that home. For women who pursue occupations
outside the home, there are, not men, but other women, to manage the home.
The final domestic care of the world must come upon women. The final
attention to social life must come upon women. In behalf of the women who
are constrained, or who choose, to sacrifice their share in this part of
the world's necessary work, some other women must do double duty. That
this rule has seeming exceptions does not make it less the universal rule.
Nothing, not even "industrial emancipation," is gotten for nothing.
When the count cited above from the Suffrage indictment was written, the
factory system had been established in this country twenty-six years. From
the Revolution down to 1822, the women of the land had been busy in the
homes making the household and personal wear. Sixteen years after the
introduction of machinery into Lowell, Mass., 12,507 operatives were at
work there, the majority of whom were women, American women and girls. New
York State also had its mills. "Fanny Forester" (afterward Mrs. Judson)
worked in a mill near her home in that State. She went there, as did hosts
of New England girls, Lucy Larcom and Harriet Robinson among the number,
to relieve the home, but especially to gain the means of education, for
themselves and for their brothers and sisters. The towns afforded better
libraries, and there were evening classes that they could attend, things
not to be had in the farming districts. In 1850, in twenty-five States,
the factory census reported 32,295 men and 62,661 women workers. In 1860
there were 46,859 men and 75,169 women. Hosiery machinery at this time was
giving employment to three times as many women as men. But the emigrant,
and not the American man, had been the means of turning out the native
woman worker; it was the foreign-born woman who worked for "unequal pay."
In 1846, the sewing-machine had been invented. Previous to that time,
61,500 women were employed making boys' clothing by hand for the market,
which was twice the number of men so employed, while the woman tailor was
as familiar a figure as the dress-maker in every village, where she went
from house to house.
In 1861 came our Civil War, with its awful sacrifice of young men. With
that also came the heavy money loss, and consequent inability of many men,
even where life and limb had been spared, to support their families in the
homes. That great conflict, with its stern necessities, its lessons of
mutual helpfulness, its military discipline, which taught the value of
organization, did more than could ten thousand conventions, even had they
been working with knowledge and system, to instruct women in love for work
for others. It nerved them to labor for self-support and for the support
of those who were now dependent upon them' because the strong arm had
fallen and the willing heart had ceased to beat. Before the year 1861 had
closed, there were a million women in this country earning their daily
bread by honorable labor. As time went on, and the slaughter continued,
and the nation's debt piled up, and prices became almost fabulous, more
and more women asked through blinding tears, "What can I do?" Every trade
was thrown open to women, and the laws had placed the married woman where
she could compete on equal terms with her unmarried sister, even though
she still had the advantage of a husband's support.
A great pother has lately been made by Suffrage workers in New York
because a bill was proposed prohibiting married women from teaching in the
public schools. This has been the unwritten law in many places for years.
The practice was adopted to offset the maintenance of married women.
Teachers should receive more pay, but so should poets and artists, and we
all hope the time will come when brain work will have more tangible market
value.
The sewing-machine had thrown women out of employment, as with it one
woman could do the work of many. The number of work-seekers was enlarged
by the influx, from the desolated South, of women whose entire living had
been swept away. This army of uneducated workers from all sections were
compelled not only to compete with men but with themselves as well. They
sought, and could seek, only the lighter employments. Suffragists had
their wish in regard to man's relinquishment of the "profitable
employments," but not in the way they intended. The women for whose sake
those profitable employments had been "monopolized" were now not only
allowed by law but compelled by circumstance to toil from sun to sun at
the best they could find to do; their frailer organizations were forced to
bear "the double curse of work and pain." A nobler army of martyrs never
turned their sorrows into blessings by the spirit in which they met them,
than the American women who put their shoulders to the wheels of business
that were moving in a hundred ways.
In 1843 a humble beginning at industrial education for girls had been made
by the Female Guardian Society. In 1854 Peter Cooper established the
Cooper Union with its generous facilities for women in industry and the
arts. The Young Women's Christian Association was founded in Normal,
Illinois, in 1872, and its work in the industrial branch spread, before
many years, to every city and town in the land. Men originated for women
the first "Woman's Protective Union." In twenty-five years it had reported
legal suits won for 12,000 women, and $41,000 collected. In 1869 the great
organization of the Knights of Labor was founded, and in its body of rules
was one "to secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work." Failure
proves that labor cannot, any more than paper, be coined into money by the
mere fiat of a government or an organization.
But the great impulse to industrial education came through the Centennial
Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876. While the land was filled with
the hum of preparation, as their contribution to that indication of
peaceful progress, the Suffrage Associations were rolling up another
petition in which to set forth their wrongs. After General Hawley, manager
of the Exposition, had courteously refused to receive it in a public
meeting, it was "pressed upon the Nation's heart" by delegates who pushed
their way into Independence Hall. Outside that historic building, under
the broiling sun, with Matilda Joslyn Gage to hold an umbrella over her,
Miss Anthony read aloud a "Declaration of Independence" that re-echoed the
sentiments of their first Declaration. It began by saying: "While the
nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are attuned to praise,
it is with sorrow we come to strike the one discordant note"--a typical
and prophetic sentence.
From 1876 girls, as well as boys, received manual training in the public
schools, and when that proved impracticable, the way was found to open
industrial schools that should include classes for girls. Every State, and
almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere
multitudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's
education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of
self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women,
without the ballot, have largely assisted in developing it.
John Graham Brooks, in a lecture delivered in New York in the winter of
1895-6, on "Some Economic Aspects of the Woman Question," said: "Woman who
used to do her work in the house now does it in the factory, and the same
work, doing her work under absolutely new and different conditions, a
change so great that it closes finally one argument that I hear again and
again by those opposed to woman suffrage--namely, that the place for woman
is in the home."
One condition under which she works that is not "absolutely new and
different" is that of sex. Whatever as a woman she could not do in the
home she cannot do abroad as a working-woman. She is in business as a
business woman, not as a business man. Economic equality in such things as
she can do is as unlike to a similarity in work which ignores sex
conditions as a business corporation is to the government under whose laws
it exists and by which its rights are defended. But even the external
conditions are not so changed as might at first appear. The statistical
proof of the youth of the majority of workers, the comparatively small
number out of the whole population who go into business, and the fact that
the domestic work for these very workers must be done by women, all show
this.
The United States Census of 1890 shows that not quite four million women
are "engaged in gainful occupations." Of these more than one and a half
million are in domestic service, and nearly half a million in professional
service, mainly as teachers. The most striking gain has been made in the
lighter forms of profitable labor--by stenographers, typewriters,
telegraph and telephone operators, cashiers, bookkeepers, etc. In 1870
there were 19,828 of these; in 1890, there were 228,421. The invention of
the type-writing machine appears to be the ballot that has mainly produced
this result. Carrol D. Wright says that in twenty cities examined in the
United States he found, among 17,000 working-women, that 15,887 were
single, 1,038 were widows, and 745 were married. This tells the same
story. The mass of these women, like the mass of men, are working, not for
public influence or station, but for the owning and holding of a home. The
latest effort in self-help for the working class is the wise one of
building them good homes. The best renting property has been found to be
that which gives privacy and those distinctions that mark the family.
The latest report of the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor shows that
of 8,040 persons who registered for employment in New York city, 6,458
were men, and 1,582 were women. Of these, the foreign-born numbered 4,804,
of whom 3,674 were men and 1,140 were women. The native-born numbered
3,234, of whom 2,796 were men, and 442 were women. The list included every
trade and profession, from that of day laborer to that of clergyman, from
that of school teacher to that of domestic servant, and showed that in the
city where more women are employed than in any other place, the proportion
of women to men was less than one fifth, and of native American to
foreign-born women two fifths.
Mr. Brooks would favor suffrage because "in this new career there are
reasons for every whit of protection." He mentions, as proof of woman's
changed attitude as an industrial unit, that the Supreme Courts of
Illinois and California have decided against special legislation for
women. They did so on the ground that "they were now earning their
livelihood under men's conditions, and should not have special legislation
in business relations." If Mr. Brooks thinks that women wish the ballot to
restore the special legislation, he does not know the Suffrage demand for
equality. In England, when the laws were under discussion that forbid the
employment of women more than a certain number of hours, and of children
under certain ages, the Woman Suffrage leaders protested against the
former as an infringement of personal rights and the ability to make
contracts. But the special legislation for business women goes on,
because, after all, the State knows that they are business women, and not
business men, and the Suffrage quarrel in regard to privilege _versus_
right goes on also.
Before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, Mrs. Ecob, of
Albany, said: "You speak of chivalry. We scorn the word! What has your
chivalry done for the weaker sex? Women are the unpaid laborers of the
world--outcasts in government." Mrs. Hood, of Brooklyn, on the same
occasion said: "Who dares insult our American manhood by declaring that
men will be less courteous to mother, wife, and sister, because they are
political equals? Woman's equality in the industrial world has to-day
produced a nobler, better chivalry than was ever conceived by the knights
of old."
These two Suffrage leaders will have to settle between themselves the
question which they have placed in dispute. It serves to point the moral
of dilemma that attends an attempted adjustment of unnatural claims.
Meantime government is caring for the weak, and chivalry is doing justice.
The Labor Law that went into effect in this State on September 1st
provided that children be classified so that those under fourteen years
should not be employed in mercantile pursuits. Children between the ages
of twelve and fourteen will be permitted to work in vacation, if they can
show that they have attended school through the year. The girls between
fourteen and twenty-one are not to be allowed to work more than ten hours
a day. Their employment before 7 A.M. and after 10 P.M. is forbidden.
Women and children are not allowed to work in basements, without permits
from the Health Board as to the condition of the basement. Seats are to be
provided for woman employees, forty-five minutes given them for luncheon,
and proper lunch and toilet rooms to be secured. Penalties, ranging from a
fine of $20 for the first offence to imprisonment, are prescribed for
violation of the law. In his last report, published in January 1897, the
New York Commissioner of Labor considers the low wages and petty wrongs of
working women and girls in New York City. He advises the formation of
unions among themselves for their better protection.
Mr. Brooks does not agree with those who claim that possession of the
ballot would raise wages. Mrs. Ames and Dr. Jacobi think it would only
raise them through the indirect influence of the greater respect in which
the worker would be held. This is safe ground again, because it is
debatable; but the domestic servants of those who hold the former opinion
might give them an object-lesson. Unfranchised as the servants are, they
have only to make a threat of leaving to secure better wages.
Harriette A. Keyser, who was the special Suffrage champion of the working-
woman before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, gave not one
fact or figure to show that the working-woman, where she had the ballot,
had already been helped by it, or that it was likely to help her, or how
and why it might help her. Among the generalities she uttered was the
following; "But the greatest value of the working-woman, to my mind, is
that without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage
could never be made. Indeed, the suffrage of the world is due to her. Do I
mean by this that every working-woman in the country sees her own value so
clearly that she demands enfranchisement? I could not say this with truth.
I make this statement irrespective of what any individual working-woman
may think. It is based upon what she is. As through the last half century
the contention for equal rights has continued, the working-woman has been
the great object-lesson. It was not from women of leisure, having all the
rights they want, that inspiration has been received. It has been caught
from the patient worker, healing the sick, writing the book, painting the
picture, teaching the children, tilling the soil, working in the factory,
serving in the household. Every stroke of these workers has been a protest
against a disfranchised individuality." Miss Keyser has mentioned most of
the classes in this country, for, so far as my experience goes, there is
no such thing as a leisure class, in the sense of an idle class, of women.
Women are almost universally industrious, and it is a mistake to suppose
that their early industry in the house was not as much appreciated and
counted in the general fund of work as their more public activity now. It
is well for Miss Keyser to make her estimate of the Suffrage value of the
working-woman one that shall have no reference to the expressed views of
the working-woman herself; because the working-woman seems almost
universally not only unconscious of but indifferent to her attitude as a
great object-lesson in favor of the ballot. But here is something new.
Suffragists have first claimed that there could be no working-woman unless
there was a ballot in woman's hand; then they claimed that, although there
was a working-woman despite the fact that she had not been enfranchised,
she was made by the agitation for the ballot; and now comes Miss Keyser to
say that, not only is the working-woman not due to the ballot, or to
ballot-seeking, but "the suffrage of the world is due to her," for
"without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage could
never have been made!" Tar baby ain't sayin' nuthin'.
Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "Whatever may be the personal
privileges of their lot, whatever the legal protection accorded to their
earnings, the public status of such a class remains strictly that of
aliens. At the present moment this vast and constantly growing army of
women industrials constitutes an alien class. The privation for that class
of political right to defend its interests is only masked, but not
compensated, by its numerous inter-relations with those who have rights."
So they are conceded to have personal privileges, and legal protection for
earnings. The alienism is then purely political, and works no hardship but
what Suffragists conceive to be in the mental attitude of the worker.
Foreign capitalists who own land or plant in the United States are
unfranchised. We have large numbers of men working in trades and
professions who never have been naturalized, but we do not dream that all
these constitute an alien class of industrials. No distinction is made in
business opportunity between the voter and non-voter. Neither is any
social distinction made regarding worker or employer on account of the
relations of either to the ballot. Market value is not measured by
suffrage, except in dishonorable transactions, and the women "with ballots
in their hands" are not the Government's preferred creditors. The men in
the District of Columbia are not conscious of lower wages and industrial
ostracism. Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "The share of women in political rights
and life--imperfect and deferred during the predominance of militarism--
has become natural, has become inevitable, with the advent of
industrialism, in which they so largely share."
Industrialism has no more power to change the basis of government than the
abolition movement had when certain advocates of it shouted that it was
"sinful to vote or hold office, because the government was founded upon
physical force and maintained itself by muskets." Industrialism is
bringing into this country some of the gravest problems it has ever met.
The sympathy of the people is on the side of labor that uses honorable
means; but Cleveland and Leadville are among the places that suggest
afresh the fact that industrialism must be kept in order for its own sake,
for the sake of general peace, and for the sake of its increasing ranks of
"alien" women who look to it for "every whit of protection," save that
which their own self-respect and that of public opinion can win them.
Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "Notwithstanding the repression of women's civil
rights, and their absolute exclusion from even the dream of a political
sphere, the women of France engage more freely than anywhere else in
business and industry." There is a moral here deeper than can be read at a
glance. The first thought suggested is, that industrial success for woman
is not in the least dependent upon the vote. The second is, that
industrial progress does not command the vote. The third is, that American
freedom has worked in the opposite direction from French unstable
republicanism. And the fourth is, that industrious France stands appalled
at the lack of increase of its population. There are many forces that sap
its national life, but perhaps the most conspicuous is the socialistic and
anarchistic tendency of its labor organizations. The woman-suffrage idea
was first openly proclaimed during the French Revolution. In 1851 the
annual Suffrage Convention in this country was called by Paulina Wright
Davis, to meet in Worcester, Mass. Ernestine Rose read to the convention
two letters addressed to that body through her, written by Jeanne Deroine
and Pauline Roland, from a Paris prison. During the revolutionary
movements of 1848, these women had played conspicuous roles. One of them
had attempted to nominate the mayor in her native city, the other to be a
candidate for the Legislative Assembly. They wrote: "Sisters of America!
Your socialist sisters of France are united with you in the vindication of
the right of woman to civil and political equality. We have, moreover, the
profound conviction that only by the power of association based on
solidarity--by the union of the working-classes of both sexes in organized
labor, can be acquired, completely and pacifically, the civil and
political equality of woman, and the social right for all."
I know the feud, and the grounds for it, between socialism and anarchy.
But both are enemies of the social order, and both are favorers of woman
suffrage. How "pacifically" the labor movement that originated in France
in 1848, and spread throughout Europe, was likely to proceed, we may judge
by its constant outbreaks kindred to the recent bomb-throwing in Paris. In
the German Working-man's Union, Hasenclever, for many years the leading
socialist in the German Reichstag, said: "The Woman Question would be
taken by the developed, or, more correctly speaking, the communistic
state, under its own control, for in this state" (which was to consist of
men and women with equal vote) "when the community bears the obligation of
maintaining the children, and no private capital exists, the woman need no
longer be chained to one man. The bond between the sexes will be merely a
moral one, and if the characters do not harmonize could be dissolved." The
"Social Democrat" of Copenhagen has for mottoes: "All men and women over
twenty-one should vote." "There should be institutions for the proper
bringing up of children." All the communistic and anarchistic labor
organizations in Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and England
proclaim woman suffrage as a prime factor, and the disruption of the
family as its corollary.
There are many who remember the visit to this country of the socialist,
Dr. Aveling, and his (so-called) wife, the daughter of Karl Marx. His
legal wife had been left in England. Miss Marx said, in reply to the
question of a Chicago lady, that love was the only recognized marriage in
Socialism, consequently no bonds of any kind would be required. Divorces
would be impossible; for when love ceased, separation would naturally
ensue.
At a meeting of the Woman's Council held in Washington, in 1888, Mrs.
Stanton said: "I have often said to men of the present day that the next
generation of women will not stand arguing with you as patiently as we
have for half a century. The organizations of labor all over the country
are holding out their hands to women. The time is not far distant when, if
men do not do justice to women, the women will strike hands with labor,
with socialists, with anarchists, and you will have the scenes of the
Revolution of France acted over again in this republic."
Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her lecture in
this country two years ago on "The Economic Emancipation of Woman," said
that she rejoiced in every co-operative working-woman's dwelling, because
it was a blow aimed at the isolated home, and she has just repeated in New
York her proposition for the institutional care of children. Alice Hyneman
Rhine, in her article on "Woman's Work in America," says of socialistic
labor, "It aims to benefit woman by recognizing her as a perfect equal of
man, politically and socially; by fixing woman's means of support by the
state so as to render her independent of man." "Freedom," a radical
socialistic newspaper published in Chicago, where Emma Goldman and her ilk
have revealed the true inwardness of such movements, recommends as the
first step "equal rights for all, without distinction of race or sex," and
the abolition of "class rule." Our most radical socialistic Labor National
Convention in New York, this year, had four woman delegates.
The Knights of Labor who first put "equal pay for equal work" into their
platform, appeared in their late convention, under the lead of Sovereign,
who declared that Gov. Altgeld "was one of the finest types of American
manhood to-day." They seem to be drifting toward that phase of Socialism
to which Alice Hyneman Rhine referred. There are no greater tyrants than
some of the Labor organizations, and one evidence of this is the fact that
they prevent the colored man from doing any work outside of a few of the
least noble occupations.
With such edged tools as these are our American women playing when they
demand, in the name of democracy, in the name of the family, in the name
of the working-woman, that the word "sex" shall be inserted in the United
States Constitution, and the word "male" be stricken from every State
constitution that now contains it.